The Veiled Man by William le Queux

The camp fire was dying in the gloomy hour before the dawn. In the Great Desert the light comes early from the far-off Holy City, golden as the Prophet's glory, to light our footsteps in those trackless waterless wastes which are shunned by man and forgotten by Allah. My tribesmen of the Azjar, still wrapped in their black veils, were sleeping soundly prior to the long march of the coming day, and all was quiet save the howling of a desert fox, and the shuffling tread of the sentries as they traversed the camp from end to end, silent and weird in their long black burnouses and veils. Alone, I was sitting gazing into the dying embers, deep in thought. I had been unable to sleep, for a strange premonition of danger oppressed me. We were in the country of the Taitok, a tribe of pure Arabs, fierce in battle, who when united with the Kel-Rhela, their neighbours, were among our most formidable opponents.

The Sheikhs of both tribes had made treaty with the French, and placed their country beneath the protection of the tricolour of the Infidels, therefore in our expedition, against their town of Azal, we knew that we must meet with considerable opposition.